Dissociation of ultracold cesium Rydberg-ground molecules

Jingxu Bai; Yuechun Jiao; Rong Song; Zhenhua Li; Jianming Zhao; Suotang Jia

doi:10.1063/5.0175109

Dissociation of ultracold cesium Rydberg-ground molecules

J Chem Phys. 2023 Nov 21;159(19):194302. doi: 10.1063/5.0175109.

Authors

Jingxu Bai¹, Yuechun Jiao^{1

2}, Rong Song¹, Zhenhua Li¹, Jianming Zhao^{1

2}, Suotang Jia^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Laser Spectroscopy, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 37966003
DOI: 10.1063/5.0175109

Abstract

We report the experimental measurements of the decay rate of polar cesium nD5/2 - 6S1/2 Rydberg-ground molecules with a large principal quantum number range of 35 ≤ n ≤ 40. Rydberg molecules are prepared employing the method of two-photon photoassociation and the molecular (atomic) ions, due to autoionization (blackbody photoionization), are detected with a microchannel plate detector. The decay rate Γ of the vibrational ground state of the deep and shadow bound molecules for triplet (TΣ) and mixed singlet-triplet (S,TΣ) are measured by fitting the molecular population with the exponential function. Comparing with the parent atom, the decay rate of the polar Rydberg-ground molecule shows an obvious increase with a magnitude of a few μs. The possible dissociation mechanism of polar Rydberg-ground molecules including a collisional decay, blackbody induced decay, and coupling of adjacent Rydberg states and tunneling decay are discussed in detail. The theoretical model is induced to simulate the measurements, showing agreement.